New Moms and Dads: Top 10 Things You Need to Know When You Have a Baby

I think having babies is by far the most stressful time and anything you can do to make it better is a plus. Here are my Top 10 things you should know before your baby is born –from a non-birth mother’s point of view:

1. Take everything you can from the hospital. It’s all great and you can’t find anything like it in the real world. Blankets, diapers, bottles, thermometers – but most especially, the little blue suction thing that they use on the baby’s nose/mouth. You’ll never find another one like it.

2. No visitors at the hospital. Although we loved having visitors, it’s the one thing I sort of regret. Take the time at the hospital for yourselves. It’s a busy time and you’re a bit overwhelmed with the newness of everything. Let everyone come see the new baby after you’ve gotten home. It gives you a great excuse to let them hold the baby while you take a long, hot shower.

3. Put that baby on a schedule. If you can, put the baby on a 3-hour schedule as soon as possible – every 3 hours the baby is changed, fed, burped and then put back to sleep. Even if they’re sleeping…wake them up. Free went on this schedule immediately because of his “residency” in the NICU. It’s like baby boot camp up there. They don’t mess around.

4. Handle the car seat. Bring the car seat up to the room or nursery and adjust the straps for the baby the day BEFORE you leave the hospital. Ask one of the nurses to help. Depending on the size of the baby, you may need to use one of their rolled-up blankets to fill in the space between the baby and the head guard thingy.

5. Prep the house. If you thought saving any baby projects until after their return home was a good idea, don’t. Assemble everything. Build everything. Wash all the baby clothes. Stock the refrigerator. Clean the house. Make sure your home is in great shape before they return.

THE DUNSTAN BABY LANGUAGE DVD by Priscilla Dunstan 2-3 weeks after the baby is born. It sounds crazy I know, but I was shocked when I heard the same cry our twins had been making and it was clear we weren’t burping them enough. It’s seriously real and spooky that some chick actually figured this out.

7. Order everything online. It’s cheaper, usually sales tax free, and best of all – it’s delivered to your house. We NEVER bought a diaper in a store. Really, we didn’t. Diapers, wipes, lotion, BPA- free bottles, shampoo/body wash, ointments (Aquaphor is a must – don’t mess around with any other diaper rash ointment). If you’re doing formula, we found the cheapest at Costco but they have a very limited selection.

8. Go out with baby. The first 3 months are pretty much the only time the baby will have no interest in the outside world and sleeps constantly. You can take her to dinner, to the movies, to the mall. Do it. It will help ease you into the next phase of baby alertness. We saw at least three movies and countless dinners with the twins. People thought we were nuts but it works.

9. Date Night. You MUST have date night at least once every two weeks. Please, I beg of you – take your wife out to eat in a restaurant. Make a reservation. Put on some clean clothes. Act like you wouldn’t pay $1,000 for sleep. If you want to stay married for a long time, take her out. Remind her that she’s still the one you fell in love with and would marry all over again.

10. Don’t listen to a word she says. I know you’ve experienced a hormonal mom-to-be, but you have no understanding of what a new hormonal nursing mom is. Don’t let anything she says get into your head. None of it will make sense. It’s completely illogical. This won’t stop until at least a month or two after she stops breastfeeding. Hopefully yours won’t decide to nurse forever and you’ll find your wife again one day soon. Or better yet, she’s decided formula is the way to go.

Those are some great suggestions! I do have a couple of comments, though – just saying, since not all babies are the same and work the same way. 🙂

6) Happiest Baby on the Block – yes, helped a lot! But I have to say that the Dunstan DVD did not help me one bit. While what she shows you may help some (or perhaps even most) parents, it didn’t work for me! My daughter’s cries (and she cried *a lot* – very fussy, colicky, with severe gas and some reflux) were virtually indistinguishable from each other, at least in my mind (maybe it was me that didn’t get it, not that it wasn’t true). I found that to be true months later, when everyone says you’re supposed to be able to know what your baby needs just by the sound of their cries. Never really happened for me. I looked at the clock to see if she might be hungry or tired. She was burped frequently. But I think a lot of the time she just cried because that was her temperament, and that’s not really discussed in the DVD.

8) For reasons explained in 6) above, I was not able to go out with my newborn *at all*. She screamed nonstop every time she was in the stroller or car seat (and even now at 17 months, she still fusses a lot in the car). The only way to get her to sleep was to bounce her while sitting on a yoga ball for 15 or 20 minutes – and she had a hard time staying asleep as well. She never slept in the car or anywhere else. I was virtually housebound until I went back to work when she was 3.5 months old. She started becoming better about stroller outings around 4 or 5 months old, when she could hold her head up. Every time she’s hit a physical milestone, such as sitting up, crawling, and walking, she’s become much easier and happier. So it basically took several months to get to the point where I could go anywhere with her that didn’t stress me out to the max with all the crying.

The good news is that all those stressful days are well behind us, and the toddler years are proving to be much more enjoyable – a real delight, in spite of the inevitable challenges! I really wish we could have experienced a blissful newborn time like some parents and babies do, but it just wasn’t in the cards for us.

I have to say I’m really, really enjoying your story of how your twins came to be, and can’t wait for the next chapter!

Hi CJ & Tashia, Every baby is a bit different and has their own needs and ways to communicate. For us with twins and two full-time working Moms, it was a little different but I found these things to be super useful. I think sometimes too, the birth mother is really involved with actually having the baby and taking some of the pressure off her and handling some of these extraneous stuff makes life just a little bit nicer and easier. 🙂

This is a great list! No kidding about the blue suction thing from the hospital, I covet that thing and have been searching for one everywhere as a back-up and have yet to find it. I also agree about setting up the car-seat early. We did it down by loading and it was a bit of a nightmare. Great tips. The three-hour schedule worked really well for us, we followed the baby whisperer–EASY. Eat, Activity, Sleep, You time. It gave me sanity! I realize that it doesn’t work for all kids but we had a “textbook baby” so it worked like a charm.